City TV Airs
Legal Help Live
Terence Lyons,
Santa Monica Mirror
February 15 - 21, 2007
If you associate live television only with the
likes of Sid Caesar or Uncle Miltie, or you think the “live”
in television died out in the late 1950s, think again. Legal
Help Live has taken the drama and spontaneity of talk radio,
added the thoughtfulness and some of the humor of a Steve Allen
project and put it on television – on Santa Monica’s CityTV,
channel 16 (and channel 36 in Los Angeles) to be exact. |
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The show features the lawyers of Solomon, Saltsman &
Jamieson, a Westside firm that practices in a variety of legal
fields (including even Indian gaming law; details below). Last
week, this reporter had an opportunity to sit in “the
studio” (also known as the Santa Monica City Council chambers)
for an hour of on-air legal questions and answers, and to talk
off-camera with the lawyers.
Legal Help Live is a one-hour show – airing Wednesdays at 4:00
p.m. – in which two partners from the firm field questions
from telephone callers on everything from serious traffic
accident injuries to identity theft to elder abuse. Last
Wednesday, February 7, Brian from Santa Monica asked about a
DUI, Joe from Sun Valley wanted an update on medical marijuana
dispensaries and Amos inquired as to what could be done about
potholes in the San Fernando Valley, among other calls.
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The show began in 2000 as a radio program on KRLA in which firm
lawyers presented a moderated debate on various legal subjects
from week to week, explained partner Ralph Saltsman. The station
began to get calls from listeners wanting to put questions to
the lawyers, and so the show evolved into the call-in format in
response to audience demand. That required less preparation time
than the debates, the lawyers said, but it also required a lot
of thinking-on-your-feet (or in-your-seat) in front of an open
microphone. |
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Article referred to on broadcast |
The call-in format on live television also provides an impromptu
atmosphere and the opportunity for the lawyers to engage in
entertaining riposte and repartee, whether it is on the subject
of a caller’s question or current topics in the law which the
lawyers themselves raise from time to time. Stephen Solomon, for
example, tends to more conservative views (from favoring the
death penalty to eating meat) while Ralph Saltsman leans more to
the left. (And, lawyers being lawyers, this reporter imagines
that they can create friendly disagreement on the spot.)
After the show had been on radio for about five years, CityTV
manager Robin Gee and a colleague from LA’s cable channel 36
came to a studio session and later asked the firm to bring the
show to television, where it has been for about two years now.
Senior partner Stephen Solomon has been practicing law since the
1960s, when he started in Santa Monica and officed in Ernie
White’s insurance building at Arizona Avenue and Lincoln
Boulevard. An early client who operated a local nightclub caused
Solomon to develop some expertise in what lawyers call “ABC
law” (as in, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage
Control), and when years later an American Indian tribe had a
liquor license problem, he wound up developing expertise in
Indian gaming law, and now represents several tribes.
The lawyers say that although they get “a lot of follow-up
calls” from TV callers letting them know how the on-air advice
worked out, the show has not really resulted in paying business
to the law firm. Nevertheless, they keep the call-in telephone
number live to their offices between shows, and younger
associate lawyers in the firm offer advice and guidance to 25 or
30 callers a week. “We look upon it as a public service,”
says partner Stephen Jamieson. |
